(06/06/1943) Karl Germer to Grady McMurtry

June 6, 1943.

Care Frater McMurtry,

93,

I have been awfully busy since I received your letter of May 14 with the enclosures and your poems. As to your poems I liked them very much; it would be futile to add any criticism, as you have sent them also to A.C. who is a real judge, and, at the same time, can give you helpful advice, for which he will be only too happy.

He will very probably have repliced to your letter of May 11 also. You have, no doubt, heard that in the meantime I have appointed Jack to succeed Wilfred – despite all considerations to the contrary, it was necessary that Wilfred leave, and I hope that Jack makes good and learns the weight of actual responsibility, the need for merging one’s personal impulses with a general scheme. He is young and you are young: we all have to learn in school where one very, very slowly and gradually discovers one’s True Will, and then the art to carry it out. That means shedding a lot of scales. The learning is the Way, and the Way is beauty.

Being the Treasurer of the Order, I attach a Memorandum which I am sending out to-day.

I wonder to whay [sic] extent you are familiar with A.C.’s works. Do you have a set of the Collected Works? I think the poetry of that period (I think up to 1905) should appeal to you. If you do not have a set, let me know, I’ll try to pick up at least Vol. I and II and mail it to you. My favourite poems, personally, are those in the Winged Beetle. Do you have this?